Crackdown

If ever there was proof of a game not needing a story, then surely Crackdown is it.

There are a whole two elements to the story:
1- It's the future, there are gangs. They're not nice.
2- Someone's been playing with genetic engineering.

End of story.

Not a promising start to my current all time favourite game, I grant you, but it's the most fun I've ever had in a game. The only drawback I have about it is that it was the first Xbox 360 game I owned and it set the bar really damn high.

As an "Agent" of the, um, "Agency", you have lots of really cool superpowers - that need working on. And to show that you're a superhuman but not really that super yet, you start the game in what appears to be a set of pajamas and a really big pair military boots. Where would the fun be if you actually started a game with a set of cojones big enough to use as a spacehopper?

You're then set out into the big wide world of Pacific City with access to a handful of guns, a supercar, an SUV and of course a truck cab. Everyone knows how useful a truck cab is. The first thing you will probably notice, after you've caught at least one of every bullet using your torso (which will take no more than 30 seconds, thanks to the very nice gang members being heavily armed), is that you're able to jump really quite high. After you catch every kind of rocket in Pacific City (again, heavily armed gang members, who want to become your friend, probably about the hour mark), you'll notice you can jump stupid distances. Get used to it, it's great fun.

Basically, when you've finally got people to stop using rockets as suppositories on you, I guarantee you'll spend all your time jumping off the tops of buildings for no apparent reason. There's just something about that whole Matrix meets Robocop thing that will steal your life and your friends.

It's even better if you're an achievement whore, because even you will have fun! Yes! You who spends in excess of £40 a week in an attempt to add another 1000 points to your Gamerscore just to make up for the fact you have no friends! The achievements are actually fun to do, and some are pretty skillful - such as using a harpoon gun to nail 5 people to one car (after you download the Gettin' Busy pack). Others, not so fun, like hijacking 100 gang cars for a measly 10 points.

That blasted thing took me 3 days of solid carjacking to do get it, then when it came up to only 10 points, I got angry and threw a few gang cars at fellow agents. And civilians. Then I was asked to stop.

By now (surely), some of you will have criticised the graphics, mostly because you're probably not all that bright... or you bought a PS3. Which accounts to the same. If you want to say "oh no, the graphics look crap and cartoony, I'm never playing that", well, then good sir, I have this to say to you. If you want a game that reflects reality, why the hell are you playing a game where you play a superhero cop who can clear buildings with a single leap, hmm?

Exactly, it's a stylised game that's fun to play, and comics are probably the best way to reflect it. If you don't like Crackdown because the graphics are a little too cell shaded for you, then you're also the kind of person who complains about Star Wars having lightsabers that can cut through anything like butter. And thus, you have no soul. And you're really dull.

Now, prior to release, the hierarchy of the gangs was explained, stating that if you take down a gang's recruiting officer, their numbers will dwindle; if you take down their arms dealer, they'll be stuck with pea shooters etc etc. This sounded really cool and not really that hard to pull off. So why the hell doesn't it work? If it was true, then taking down a gang's arms dealer with a big, veiny penchant for explosives, and everyone and everything for half a mile around him would result in quite a blow to a gang's weapon distribution. It's clear we were lied to, because even after doing the aforementioned, I've still had to stop and pull Renault Clio-sized pieces of shrapnel out of my supercop arse.

Similarly, I've been swarmed after destroying every trace of "Evil Gang Job Centre Plus" man and then run over by a turbocharged pickup after dissecting the gang mechanic using half of Italy's stock of grenades. I understand marketing, I do! I spent the equivalent of 5 years studying the ins and outs of it for reasons I don't understand! But I don't understand why these damned developers keep feeding us such lies about their games.

Take Fable 1 for example, now, I liked it. A lot. But Peter Molyneux promised the world and was appropriately bitch-slapped by everyone else at Lionhead and forced to not talk about anything they haven't already got working in Fable 2. For a similar reason, I'm looking forward to Duke Nukem Forever, just to watch 3D Realms walk onto the stage at E3 some time in the future and admit they haven't actually known they were still a developer anymore, then show us an Xbox Live Arcade version of Duke Nukem 3D.

Speaking of which, I've also discovered something interesting on the answer to all of life's problems, Wikipedia.

"Duke Nukem Forever (DNF) is a first-person shooter video game being developed by 3D Realms"

As anyone who's ever played a racing game since Gran Tourismo 1, and crashed in one, will know, DNF generally stands for "Did Not Finish" ... interesting.